WikiLeaks just released thousands of pages of documents that bring to light a lot of information about the government’s capability to hack into almost anything with an internet connection.The CIA, which engineered the backdoors and software revealed in the report, has ways into smart TVs, smartphones, and the most basic levels of various operating systems, as well as methods of breaking encryption.

Source: The CIA has the key to your IoT, but they should be the least of your concerns | TechRepublic

US regulator looks at Internet of Things regulation, looks away Federal Trade Commission says it won’t step in… this time

Source: US regulator looks at Internet of Things regulation, looks away | The Register

Connected consumer devices have been commandeered recently during multiple cyber attacks, largely because immense cost pressures have limited the use of satisfactory security technologies and development practices. However, as the large organizations targeted by these attacks experience economic loss, Bernard Vachon, Director of Embedded Software Engineering at embedded design services firm Cardinal Peak forecasts that industry will respond with IoT security services and standards.

Source: Cybersecurity for connected consumer devices: A lack of standards, expertise | Embedded Computing Design

Internet of Things devices mounted on cows’ tails are responsible for 150,000 safe births of calves, if the developer and Vodafone are to be believed.

Moocall, developers of a calving sensor which is linked to Vodafone’s M2M Internet of Things network, says that “more than 110,000 calves and around 50,000 cows die every year due to birth complications” which could be avoided if farmers were aware of them, and in a position to call a vet for help when needed.

We are told that around 150,000 calves were born quite literally underneath the monitoring of Moocall’s tail-mounted IoT sensor, which incorporates a SIM card.

The system works by telling the farmer how active each cow is at a given time. The sensor detects the direction in which the cow’s tail moves: ordinarily cows swish their tails back and forth to ward off flies, whereas when it is having pre-birth contractions the tail tends to move up and down and the movements correlate with the frequency of contractions.

Source: A mooving tail of cows, calves and the Internet of Things | The Register

Pwnie Express’ 2017 Internet of Evil Things report finds that the Mirai botnet has helped to increase awareness of the risk of unmanaged and unmonitored IoT devices.

Source: Mirai Botnet Opens Organizations’ Eyes to Internet of Things Risks | eWeek

Spiral Toys — a division of Mready, a Romanian electronics company that lost more than 99% of its market-cap in 2015 — makes a line of toys called “Cloudpets,” that use an app to allow parents and children to exchange voice-messages with one another. They exposed a database of millions of these messages, along with sensitive private information about children and parents, for years, without even the most basic password protections — and as the company imploded, they ignored both security researchers and blackmailers who repeatedly contacted them to let them know that all this data was being stolen.

Source: Collapsing “connected toy” company did nothing while hackers stole millions of voice recordings of kids and parents | Boing Boing

If the Internet of Things (IoT) industry is the Jedi order, with Philips Hue lightsabers and “smart” cloud-based Force powers, then popular Twitter account Internet of Shit is a Sith Lord. At a time when the technology industry seems eager to put a chip in everything, consequences be damned, Internet of Shit puts a name to the problem of new, useless electronics and highlights that some of these products may not be as benign as we think.

Source: Connecting Everything to the Internet: What Could Go Wrong? | PC World

Internet of Things (IoT) is unequivocally led by hype and will continue to be, as every industry looks to leverage IoT to improve efficiency and productivity , discover new business models and explore innovative revenue streams. Companies big and small are in the fray. At last count, there were over 3,000 IoT startups globally.

Source: Beyond the hype, big story awaits Internet of Things companies | The Economic Times

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of those acronyms which has captured the imagination of business and public alike, with ‘connected’ rhetoric fuelled by  everything from connected cars to wearables.However, according to a report by HPE Aruba, IoT is going beyond industry hype, emerging as a technology which is good for efficiency, innovation and profitability.

In its ‘Internet of Things: Today and Tomorrow’ report, HPE Aruba found 57% of companies have adopted IoT technologies, with that number set to increase to a huge 85% by 2019.

Source: Internet of Things starts to live up to its potential as adoption and ROI sky-rocket | Computer Business Review

Even though they differ greatly, what analyst and vendor projections all agree on is that the number of connected internet of things devices will essentially go through the roof over the next couple of years. Estimates range anywhere from 20 to 50 billion connected IoT devices by 2020 — with Gartner, for example, projecting 20 billion devices as more a “conservative” estimate, if there ever is a conservative view in light of these stunning figures. But no matter how many billions of devices it will finally be, one thing is for sure — it’s going to be huge!

Source: The darkside of the internet of things: The security challenge | IoT Agenda